Do more clicks on car adverts really mean more sales?

As our hunger for greater technology becomes ever more ravenous I wonder if there is a breaking point where it will simply become information overload and people will go running back to “the basics”.

I spoke with a dealer recently who had paid an internet marketer to critique his website and suggest any improvements to help him gain more showroom traffic.

Convinced he was on the money in terms of everything else he did and being reasonably happy with his conversion rates, he wanted to know how much better he could be at marketing his cars on the web.

He was signed up to all the big players Autotrader, eBay et al at great cost, and as he had long since discarded more traditional types of advertising he was expatiating great things from this company and anticipated a lot more sales as a result.

They advised the usual, like investing in pay per click and an SEO campaign, and they obviously advised expanding his profile through social media, clearly all building blocks to creating a better customer base and a long term reputation, however the upshot was that although he took his own pictures and was fanatical about the quality he was not maximising the exposure to his stock he could have been.

The company also advised him that multi image and film technology were “the future” and that by having 6 or more images of the cars he was selling rather than the one he had currently, he was many times more likely to have a customer click onto his car than he was at present.

Great! That’s simple then. But the point is, although this may create more interest, does it mean that the customer is more likely to follow up and actually buy the car?

That is a bit of a dilemma because as the web moves on at a furious pace car dealers are being constantly told that what they are doing is out of date or not likely to help them sell more cars, but many more are also saying that there is no substitute for selling great cars at reasonable prices and providing a great service which encourages people to come back and tell their friends.

The upshot is that he is currently involved in a 3 month trial which will measure whether he gets more hits on his cars and, more importantly, sells more cars than he normally would.

He has therefore increased his stock holing in readiness for the rush and at the end of the trial he will let us know whether the investment has paid off and whether he really will be in bed with technology once and for all.

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